America...Your Career Starts Here?
I was talking to a woman around the New York area late last week. She found my web site after doing a search and requested more information. I followed up with her and she mentioned she was actually looking to go back to school to become a travel agent. After asking a few more questions I found that she had been arranging family travel plans for some time and had a lot of people who used her as a resource on where to go. She had become frustrated with her own “brick and mortar” agency because she could actually find better deals on the internet than her own agent.
I mentioned what my wife and I have been doing with YTB Travel and Cruises and how I could actually get her up and running as her own referral agency, and supply a plethora of information on how she could book this same travel without spending hoards of time and expense in school. After sending her a few links on industry certifications that I know of, and have taken, she sounded very interested in our business model. Both she and I were certain she would get started with us late last week.
I got an e-mail from her Monday:
“Thank you for all your information and answers to some tough questions. After careful reading and consideration and conversations with some people locally I have decided to obtain a degree in Travel and Tourism Hospitality Services at our local college.”
WHAT?!! She more than likely ended up getting that advice from the same agent who couldn’t find the deals she could find on her own! She will also find out very quickly like I did that people who can…do, people who can’t…teach. I’m also willing to bet that she will find out like I did, she is far more intelligent than any of the teachers she will run into. Than why is she listening to others instead of me? Because she’s been trained like I was from a very early age that going to school is the only way to go to get ahead in life. She simply doesn’t know what she will be learning when she does go back to school.
She is looking for know-how, and isn’t aware that travel agent schools are designed, primarily, to train low-paying, entry-level employees for travel agencies. Consequently, travel agent schools concentrate on dull, rote tasks like using a computerized reservation system. Furthermore, travel agent schools do not teach you how to think like an agency owner or how to get out in the community and sell travel. That's because travel agent schools are designed to serve the needs of storefront travel agencies, providing them a steady stream of entry-level employees who will sit at a computer screen all day and enter orders.
Travel agent schools also don't go out of their way to teach you that selling cheap, point-to-point airline tickets is no way to get rich quick -- or to get rich at all, for that matter. Once again, this is because travel agent schools serve the travel agency business first and foremost.
I ended up wasting 2 years of my life and over $40,000 with nothing to show for it but debt and depression after doing the same thing. I went to school for Audio Video some years ago. It wasn’t until I got an internship at a local radio station in Pittsburgh that I found mentors, not teachers, who were willing to teach me all the tricks of the trade FOR FREE. These men and woman had actually been working in the field of my choice for 15 to 20 years and I learned more from them in 6 months than I did two years sitting in some class room. They also had the connections I needed to get my own gig in radio and by the time the other classmates got out of school, I was already established in the same industry they were trained for.
Every year hundreds of thousands of people aspire to participate in this business transaction called "college". We have graduating seniors in high school all this month and next who will be listening to their parents and friends to do the same thing.
I'll give you $80,000 and 4 years of my life, and in return, I get to scramble for a JOB that starts at $32,000 on the high end.
AND PEOPLE STRIVE FOR THIS. Corporate America has done a GREAT job at selling the public that this is a really good deal! That "college" is the way to go!
Well here's the truth.
As a business owner, I attended a free Sandals Seminar on Tuesday of this week here in Atlanta. The top executives of the company trained my wife and I on the benefits of booking family vacations, honeymoon packages, and large corporate events with their resorts. I make more money, and save money earning free nights at these beautiful resorts selling these packages! This bright, intelegent woman will spend her time and money sitting in a classroom learning how to book airline tickets for pennies for someone else.
A college education does NOT teach you how to make money. It teaches you how to become a productive part of corporate America. It's a training camp for the next participants of the rat race. They are nothing more than "employee farms". They don't have your best interest in mind. You are a product. You are nothing more than low grade human fuel for the guy who started the company.
And you will continue to pay the ultimate "stupid tax" for the rest of your life until you wise up and take matters into your own hands.
If you want to pursue a life in business, college is a scam. If you have dreams and desires to make a 6 figure income, why do we listen to people who don’t make that kind of money themselves? Until you find MENTORS like I did in the REAL WORLD, you will never learn what you need to make it in any business.
Like I said, this was a very smart woman, who is simply misinformed about which direction to go when it comes to learning about the industry of her choice. If she’s as smart as I think she is, she’ll soon realize that what she has been told by others she knows and trusts is not the way to go.
Doug & Ronda Bauknight
AKA: TravelPro
Travel Agent / Networker
Phone: 678.458.5812
Learn How To Become A Travel Agent
Book Your Travel & Vacations With
Travel Reservations: 1.800.243.4450
RTA #24635
